AN air war over economic investment has broken out with Nicola Sturgeon accused of rushing out an announcement on ferry jobs in an attempt to overshadow George Osborne’s trip to Scotland with major announcements on defence and North Sea gas jobs.
The Chancellor, visiting Faslane, hailed as a “massive boost” to Scotland and the defence industry a £500 million UK Government investment linked to Trident renewal, which will safeguard almost 7000 defence jobs.
Later in Aberdeen, he hailed the £3 billion announcement by Danish firm Maersk to develop the Culzean gas field, the largest to be discovered in the North Sea for a decade. This will secure 6000 jobs and create 400 more.
The announcements showed the strength of Scotland being part of the United Kingdom, insisted Mr Osborne.
But the First Minister, coincidentally, turned up in Port Glasgow to announce the local Ferguson Marine shipyard was the preferred bidder for a £97m contract to build two new ferries, safeguarding 150 jobs and creating new ones.
She said the contract “underlines our commitment to creating the vital jobs needed to boost local economies and help stimulate growth across Scotland”.
Derek Mackay, the Scottish Transport Minister, stressed how the Ferguson announcement proved “Scottish shipbuilding can succeed in a competitive market”.
But a senior Conservative source told The Herald it was “curious” that Ms Sturgeon had sought to “fast-forward” the Ferguson announcement, which had been expected later this month.
“Anyone would think she was trying to grab a share of the limelight,” he mused.
But a spokeswoman for the SNP Government denied there was any attempt to engage in a political spoiler to deflect attention from Mr Osborne’s Scottish visit.
“Confirmation of the preferred bidder has been expected for some time and the First Minister’s visit was confirmed last week; long before we even knew of a visit by the Chancellor,” she insisted.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel